Thus Schmietex Engineering gains valuable know-how and more than 70 years of experience in the professional production of knitting parts. “We want to further expand the stitch-bonding business and maintain needle production in Saxony,” says Erik Schmiedl, share holder of Schmietex Engineering. For Naplafa, the merger means the preservation of a long history of success in the textile industry.

When, at the end of 2021, the plans of the previous Naplafa owner Kern Liebers, based in Schramberg, became known to close the Chemnitz site and to relocate only certain product ranges, Schmietex Managing Director Jörg Bredemeyer and the Schmiedl family of shareholders entered into initial talks. The basis for this was ideal: Schmietex Engineering, as a main customer, had been buying a wide variety of Naplafa products for many years in order to process them in its casting department and then use them in its own machine production or supply them worldwide to its long-standing customers in the stitch-bonding segment.

With the continuation of needle and casting production and the preservation of the Naplafa brand by Schmietex, not only is a long-standing tradition at the industrial location of Chemnitz being preserved, but the textile machine manufacturer is also becoming an international supplier of warp knitting elements and modules with a unique range of products and know-how in the field of stitch-bonding technology.

• Schmietex Engineering: Since its foundation in Chemnitz, Germany, in 1995, Schmietex has focused on the manufacture of individual stitchbonding machines for the production of a wide variety of composite materials, mainly for technical textiles. Machines of the types Malimo with weft insertion, Maliwatt, Malivlies, Kunit/Multinit and customized variants in working widths from 1600 to 6000 mm are developed and constructed. A comprehensive range of accessories and spare parts for all machine types are part of the service, as are on-site installation and repairs, and general overhauls at the Hohenstein-Ernstthal site near Chemnitz.